Let's see your newest acquisitions!

If I have one regret from my early collecting days, it is the shunning of commemoratives. They have such beautiful designs. But not being meant for circulation, I shunned them.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

The first rule of numismatic spending (for me at least): why have one when you can have two at twice the price? Well, in this case I guess it’s a little more than twice the price, but I digress.

My first bust quarter was a raw 1815 with some marks in the fields, so when I saw this one I thought it would be a worthy companion for my first one. Graded G4 by NGC (I personally think it is conservatively graded; it looks nicer than the G6’s on the market right now).



No quarters had been minted for 8 years when the Planters Bank in New Orleans coerced the Mint to make them 69,232 quarters at the end of 1815. In January 1816, another 20,003 were delivered the day before a fire damaged the mint’s rolling equipment, effectively crippling the mint’s capacity to make silver and gold coins (cent planchets were imported).

 

Nice circ cam

 

1945 s inverted s MS-67

 

This isn't the inverted S as I first stated....it is an 1941--s mms-0041 meaning they used 5 different mm styles to strike the 1945 s mercury dimes . This happens to be the mms-004.1 fs-511 the 1941 style s was re used to strike the reverse on this 45 mercury dime.

 

@Marshall this was a great suggestion! It took me a few days to dig out the digital microscope to see it, but this is the scratch / eyelash.



Not only does it look like an eyelash, but neither blowing it off nor brushing it gently (both using tools meant for camera lenses) would budge it.

I am wondering if this is one of those coins I have only heard about - where the owners in times past would varnish the coins to protect them. Just in case this is true, I am not going to rinse the coin in any kind of solvent to loosen the hair. I am terrified that the entire finish could be affected and I would be left with a dud.

Thanks again for your suggestion. If I ever get worried about the eyelash I'll send it to a professional to deal with. But that's never gonna happen! It's much cooler to think that this may be an eyelash from the original collector 127 years ago.

 

My first thought was that it looked exactly like an eyelash as well. Sweet coin either way.

 

Another possibility is that the eyelash was on the die or blank at the time of striking which would cause a strike-through on the finished coin.

 

Cool hypothesis.

 

I just back in town, and this was awaiting my arrival at the post office. 1899 S AU 58 Morgan.
A (somewhat) overlooked date.
Very nice and lustrous for the grade.

 

Nice gold coins Alan. I really like that 1986 in Roman numerals.

 

That 1899-S is a killer! And yep, it absolutely, positively deserves a green CAC sticker. No argument about that!

 

got

 

I’ve already cracked them all out and most are cleaned and polished, buuuuuut there’s a few gems hiding in there. Photographs will hopefully be done later tonight.

 

1943 steel cent webbing

 

Both 64s were from the wall set. The Quarter is insane